Amateur Athletes and Professional Coaches & Executives

This week would not be complete without an Olympics-related post. Just before the opening ceremonies, the Washington Post ran a story titled “Olympic executives cash in on a ‘Movement” that keeps athletes poor.” It draws a sharp contrast between the actual athletes, who absent a rare endorsement deal or a sport with a lucrative professional league are generally scrounging funds from family and friends to support their training, and the employees and “volunteer” board members of the numerous national and international sports federations and Olympic Committees who often make hundreds of thousands of dollars annually or enjoy generous perks such as first-class air travel. This not to say all athletes are uncompensated; the article details the complicated baseline pay and bonus systems in place for many US athletes, but the amounts available to athletes vary enormously depending on the sport and the potential for medalling. 

Such disparities are also not unique to the Olympics. Many have pointed to the college sports system, particularly FBS football and Division 1 basketball programs, as exhibiting the same disparities between the (student) athletes, few of whom make it to the lucrative professional level, and coaches & administrators. Such disparities also exist even in youth sports, where, for example, the President & CEO of Little League Baseball Incorporated received compensation of close to $500,000 from all related entities according to the group’s 2014 Form 990, although that amount seems relatively reasonable once it is acknowledged that he is responsible for running an almost $30 million a year organization (including over $8 million in broadcasting rights payments) that has over 400 employees and involves millions of children. And, as John Colombo (Illinois) has discussed in this space, both the college programs and the U.S. Olympic Committee continue to enjoy favorable tax treatment despite the increasing commerciality of their activities because of “analytical inertia” that has let the law of charities stagnant while the world moved on.

Lloyd Mayer